Heylel Teomim
Heylel Teomim Thoabath was the leader of the First Cabal and a member of the Solificati. His betrayal of the Cabal to the Order of Reason ended in his execution. The Ascension Warrior claimed to be the reincarnated Teomim. Biography Julius de Medici, an aristocratic Italian alchemist disowned by his family, and Mia de Napoli, an impoverished orphan who worked as a thief and a prostitute, undertook an alchemical ritual that fused them intro a single being. The nature of the ritual itself is poorly understood, and some have suggested that the fusion was an accident rather that the goal. The resulting individual, simultaneously male and female, took the name Heylel Teomim, Hebrew for "twins of the morning star". (Heylel is commonly equated to the Latin Lucifer.) The fusion of two souls was not quite perfect; Teomim's appearance was constantly in flux, and when speaking the first person, he routinely alternated between "I" and "we" even in the same sentence. (In Mage: The Ascension canon, he/him pronouns are typically used after first affirming Teomim's bigender status.) Many regarded Teomim as unusually attractive and highly charismatic, but often found something slightly "off" that kept them from getting closer. Teomim himself, for all his eloquence and brilliance, was prone to arrogance: he saw himself as a perfect being, or at least closer to perfection than anyone else, and this invariably colored his interactions with anyone who did not share the same opinion. The First Cabal Teomim took part in the Grand Convocation as a representative of the Solificati, and was chosen not only to join the First Cabal but to lead it. His personal charisma helped smooth over many of the conflicts in the Cabal, at least in the beginning. He was especially close friends with Louis DuMonte and Akrites Salonikas; Walking Hawk, on the other hand, regarded Teomim's existence as something unnatural and never warmed to him. But over time he became frustrated by the inability of his colleagues, and the Traditions as a whole, to work together, especially compared to the unity of the much smaller Order of Reason. Teomim also struck up a sexual relationship with Eloine of the Verbena, who eventually gave birth to twins. This relationship drove a wedge between Eloine and Bernadette, who was also infatuated with Teomim. (Teomim himself noted when he met the two of them that together, they would have been an ideal mate.) At some point after the twins' birth, Eloine recalled seeing Teomim look at her with "enmity" and believed he had become a threat to the children. From that point on they were estranged. In early 1470, Teomim abandon the Cabal and betrayed their location to the Order of Reason. He did so, according to his own account, because he had realized the Traditions could never be unified without a direct, material threat right in front of them. Teomim insisted his intentions were only that the Cabal be captured, not killed, but DuMonte, Fall Breeze, and Daud-Allah Abu Hisham fought to the death rather than be captured, and Cygnus Moro was tortured to death in captivity. He also claimed that he fled the battle with the intention of reporting it to the council, in order to provoke them to action, but Salonikas also escaped the scene and was the first to report that the Cabal was fallen and Heylel had betrayed them. Of his and Eloine's infant children, Teomim claimed to have no knowledge. Teomim was captured and brought back to Horizon to face justice. He did not deny his actions, although he rejected accusations that he had become a Nephandus or turned to Infernalism. He insisted that he had only done what was necessary to unify the Traditions, because without that unity they could not stand against the Order of Reason. He was sentenced to execution by Gilgul, which was carried out in November 1470, and thereafter the title Thoabath ("Abomination") was appended to his name in all records. In the aftermath of the Great Betrayal, many mages lost confidence in the Council. The Solificati were torn apart by internal dissent and left the Seat of Matter empty for several centuries. Eloine, Bernadette, Walking Hawk and Salonikas each went into their own exile. Praedictum Apocalypsis Long after the events of the Great Betrayal, Salonikas dictated a lengthy text to his student Assam the Wanderer from his Arctic exile, which eventually made its way to Porthos Fitz-Empress. In this text Salonikas admitted that he had indeed foreseen Teomim's betrayal of the Cabal but not intervened to stop it. One part of the text, the Praedictum Apocalypsis, details why: in a vision, Salonikas foresaw Teomim becoming the greatest mage of all time, drawing in large numbers of disciples with his natural charisma even from prison. Under Teomim's auspices, the Traditions and the Order of Reason would be united into a single dictatorship of mages, which would impose a cruel, sterile vision of perfect order on the world. Salonikas goes so far as to suggest that these visions were sent to him by that future version of Teomim, whom he calls Moloch, in order to prevent them from coming to pass. Salonikas shared these visions with others in the Cult of Ecstasy, and they agreed that to prevent the Praedictum Apocalypsis from coming to pass, the Great Betrayal should be allowed to proceed, granting the Council a pretext for executing Teomim before he could cause more harm. Ascension Warrior In 1997, someone claiming to be Heylel Teomim reappeared. He was a genetically engineered super-soldier of the Progenitors, possessed by a rogue spirit which claimed to be Teomim. Whether this was true was never conclusively determined. Gallery Heylel.png|From The Fragile Path: Testaments of the First Cabal Heylel1.jpg Heylel2.jpg Heylel3.jpg Heylel4.jpg Heylel5.jpg References * Category:Mage: The Ascension character Category:Signature characters (WOD)